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2015 Conference Highlights:
Our Plenary Speaker Introducing Prof Dr. Ibrahim Abdurrahmani Farajaje': Professor Dr Ibrahim Abdurrahmani Farajajé is the Provost and Professor of Cultural Studies at the Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist/Multireligious member school of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. He is the Director of Starr King’s Certificate in Multireligious Studies and serves in the Core Doctoral Faculty of the Graduate Theological Union in the Interdisciplinary studies area. He is a graduate of the Faculté de Théologie de l’Université de Berne (Switzerland), from which he received the degree Dr. Théol, magna cum laude in 1986. Dr. Farajajé was appointed in 2011 to the Editorial Board of the Abhishiktananda Desk for Interreligious Dialogue (Delhi Brotherhood Society) as one of the editors of the books of Swami Abhishiktananda/Dom Henri LeSaux. From the 1980s, he was very active in cultivating religious responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. He uses performance art, installation art and video for his work in subverting "fictions of purity". He is currently working in the areas of food justice, environmental justice, prison abolition, queer/trans muslims of African descent. He is also involved in the “green burial movement” A Statment from Dr. Ibrahim Abdurrahmani Farajaje': "Whether teaching about HIV/AIDS, heteronormativity, Organic multireligiosity, transphobia, ‘earthodoxy’-religion and care for the Earth, immigration policies, hasidic/sufi overlaps, death penalty abolition, colonisation, gynephobia, or translating Frantz Fanon, Eva deVitray-Méyérovitch, Philo of Alexandria or the works of Pavel Florensky in order to teach on his the()logy of friendship, or studying the figure of Zaynab in the study of Ashura/Muharrem narratives, or Buddhist/Muslim intersections, i am always concerned about everyone having access to the fulness of life. I want to open up possibilities for people to show up in life in the fulness of their being. And i want them to be able to be recognise the discourse behind a question before they rush to answer it. i want them to be “thought-provoking” engaged scholars in the public place. if i can help them understand the rôle Philo of Alexandria played in the history of the interpretation of the Sodom/Gomorrah narratives, and his particular reasons for interpreting these narratives in the ways he did, then they can read Philo and when they are called upon to engage in public conversation, conversation in the public place about so-called “sodomy” laws, they will have the scholarly background with which to do it in a very subversive way! This is the work of the organic intellectual, of those who strive to give life to counter-hegemonic ideas and actions, grounded in and responding to communities of accountability." |
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